Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit [Paperback]

Taking Control argues that neither side in the Brexit debate really understood the European Union or what was involved in reclaiming Britain's sovereignty. The EU is neither a supranational nanny state, nor an internationalist peace project. It is the means by which Europes elites transformed their own states in order to rule the void where representative politics used to be. Leaving the EU is a necessary but not sufficient step towards closing the chasm between rulers and ruled.

This book makes the democratic case for national sovereignty, arguing for a radical, forward-looking reconstitution of the British nation-state through strengthening representative democracy. It is essential for anyone who wonders why British politics is so dysfunctional and who wants to do better.

This is the most important book to come out of the struggles over Britain's membership of the EU, and it makes all other works on the subject look trivial. The authors provide a profound analysis of the issues involved, and show how only thorough-going changes in Britain's political and constitutional arrangements will be able to respond to the challenges of this near-revolutionary moment.
Richard Tuck, Professor of Government Theory, University of Harvard

This book forcefully argues that Brexit was no more than the first step in a long process of rebuilding a democratic nation-state, indeed a democratic nation, out of the ruins of a politics without national sovereignty. Soverl£p